Why I’m trying to turn my daughter from a snitch into a double agent
“When you’re not here, daddy makes the car wobble,” Emma informed Victoria, who looked at me accusingly from her moral high ground in the passenger seat.
Feeling some pressure to clarify Emma’s assertion that I swerved recklessly along the road with offspring in the back, I decided to explain the situation.
Unfortunately, Emma got in first with her interpretation, “he jiggles the wheel to make it wobble”.
In case anyone with a background in road traffic policing is reading this, I’d like to clarify if I was doing that, which I wasn’t, it was on an open private road with no cars leading up to a historic property, driving at a very low speed. Interestingly, Victoria seemed to be going with Emma’s version of events. “He shouldn’t really do that, and let’s hope he won’t do it again because it’s dangerous,” Victoria said in that peculiar third person dialogue, used when issuing a command via a conversation with someone else, but within the earshot of the person being discussed. This form of communication is a mainstay of how we can both issue orders. “Maybe mummy could cook dinner tonight because daddy’s tired,” I’ll say to Emma and Victoria will reply, “Daddy’s not the only tired one”.
The problem with the driving issue was Victoria was paying attention to Emma spreading malicious and clearly untrue rumours about my driving. Naturally, the girl twin was
DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR A FIRST TIME DAD OF TWINS
taking this attention as affirmation she’d done the right thing, and it was fuelling a growing issue, where she informs her mother of my every move.
What this meant is I must cover my back every time I do anything not quite by the rule book, such as offering biscuits as a snack rather than fruit or, on one badly judged occasion, leaving them to put the bins out.
And no matter how many times I explain omertà, the Italian vow of silence when faced with challenging questions from authorities, she doesn’t appreciate the code of honour.
Annoyingly, I didn’t receive as much feedback as I’d like on anything their mother did. Instead, what I got was, “mummy lets us eat crisps for breakfast”, which was clearly untrue, but placed me in an awkward situation.
If I gave them crisps, they’d say, “daddy gave us crisps”, after I was duped into sanctioning it.
Somehow, information is only flowing one way, and it’s not in my favour. This is why I’m encouraging the twins through a system of rewards to inform against their own mother. Let’s see if we can’t level things up a little.